All posts by Thomas Beagle

Co-founder and spokesperson for Tech Liberty
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Defend the NZ internet

This week has seen the launch of two new groups dedicated to protecting the internet in New Zealand.

Retake the Net

The first is Retake the Net, which, in their own words:

It’s increasingly clear that there are serious issues, both in New Zealand and abroad, with internet infrastructure, use, and control. Rather than simply moaning about them, the Retake the Net crew decided to start actually _doing_ something about the issues (with, of course, as much help as we can muster).

RtN’s all about fostering projects which help promote the best aspects of the net, and using new technologies to make sure people can communicate freely. We’re also about increasing the real engagement between government and citizens, and promoting New Zealand’s transition from a consumer to a producer of content and information. We realise that there’s a long way to go, but there’s no time like the present to start.

NZ Internet Freedom Collective

Then there’s the NZ Internet Freedom Collective, who are initially aiming their efforts at the new copyright law that was just passed:

Our founding purpose will be to establish a broad campaign of political, legal and social action aimed squarely at achieving the total repeal of the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011 and the securing of our Internet rights and freedoms in the next election.

These new groups are both looking for members, or you could consider joining one of the following:

And, of course, at Tech Liberty we’re still looking for people who want to be involved in defending our civil liberties in the digital age.

article, copyright, TPP

Dispatches from the Copyright Wars

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Call for submissions on regulations for new copyright law

The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill has been passed and now the Ministry of Economic Development has to develop the detailed regulations that will define the processes described within the Bill. They have asked for submissions and have released a discussion document (link currently not working due to failure on MED site).

The main topics are:

  • The procedures around rights owners sending notices to IPAPs (internet service providers), IPAPs sending them on to account holders, and account holders challenging the notices.
  • The method that the Copyright Tribunal will use to calculate penalties.
  • The fees charged by IPAPs (ISPs) to the rights owners for handling the notices.

The following points are of note:

  • The draft list of requirements for a notice includes proof that the complainant does hold the copyright for the work being copied. The complainant must also have a New Zealand address for service.
  • The Ministry favours leaving the Copyright Tribunal to set the penalties with minimal guidance.
  • The discussion paper says that ISPs making submissions should work out their costs as if they were processing 5000 notices per month. Each!

We’ll be doing a submission aimed at making this inherently flawed law work as fairly as possible.

Wikileaked US cables about s92A and TPP

Idiot Savant at No Right Turn has been keeping an eye on the flood of documents coming from Wikileaks and brought our attention to two of them:

From April 2009, this cable (09WELLINGTON88) is a general backgrounder on the events around the rise and fall of section 92A of the Copyright Act. The US bias towards the rights owners is clear and the cable makes it clear that the US government would be pressuring the NZ government to hurry in the redrafting of the law – and even offers to help. The following quote will worry anyone who has been following IP issues in the US:

U.S. agencies have the benefit of 10 years worth of experience in enforcing the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act that may serve useful to New Zealand officials in their effort to implement section 92A.

From February 2010, this cable about TPP (10WELLINGTON65) is amusing because the MFAT officials are telling the US that the perception in New Zealand that a free trade agreement with the US will lead to be a big increase in trade is over-hyped. The officials also admit that intellectual property (copyright, trademarks, patents) and pharmaceuticals will be contentious issues in NZ.

article, copyright

Quick guide to the new copyright bill

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The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill is a replacement for the abandoned section 92A of the Copyright Act. It provides provisions for media companies to accuse people of infringing copyright, and for those people to be fined by the Copyright Tribunal. It also includes the penalty of disconnecting their internet – but this provision will initially be suspended.

The Bill went through one round of submissions (see ours) but the second reading was done under parliamentary urgency on the 13th of April and it is expected to be passed, still under urgency, on the 14th of April.

Updates: the bill has passed its third reading and will come into effect on September 1st, 2011. The Ministry of Economic Development is consulting on the regulations that will help with the administration of the law.

Improvements

The Bill has some improvements over section 92A:

  • It has replaced the overly wide definition of ISP (Internet Service Provider) with the idea of an IPAP (Internet Protocol Address Provider).
  • The person accused of infringing copyright now has a chance to defend themselves against the accusations.
  • It doesn’t make ISPs responsible for making decisions about disconnection – they just have to pass messages between the accuser and the accused.
  • It better respects the privacy of account holders.

Major problems

But overall it still has some major problems:

  • It makes the person whose name is on the internet account liable for all actions done by any user of that connection. Flatmates will be responsible for the people they live with, businesses will be responsible for their staff, parents will be responsible for their kids, librarians will be responsible for the users of their free internet terminals. Sharing your internet connection will put you at legal risk.
  • It includes the idea that the Copyright Tribunal should believe the accusation from the media companies unless the account holder can prove it to be wrong. This is even when these accusations have been proven time and time again to often be substantially inaccurate. There are no penalties for making false accusations.
  • It still includes internet disconnection as a penalty. Initially this provision will be suspended but it can be reactivated at the whim of the government. We oppose disconnection.

Political support

National, Labour and the Maori Party are voting in favour of the Bill.

The Greens are voting against it.

Tech Liberty articles about the bill

Other articles of note

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Website takedowns: a followup

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We recently wrote about how an offensive website was taken offline by complaints.

In particular, we talked about the tactics that were used to take them down and whether they were a good thing for the internet or not. The two tactics described were:

  1. Complaining to the ISP that the site breached their terms of service. We said this risks reducing opinion on the internet to the level of whatever a company’s PR department finds acceptable.
  2. Using copyright complaints over the site’s use of a photo without permission. Taking down an entire site over what is arguably a reasonable use of an image is an affront to freedom of speech and shows how dangerous these US-style shoot-first-ask-questions-later copyright laws are.

The article attracted a fair bit of comment both for and against the use of these tactics. We also received some new information and thought it was worth posting a followup.
Continue reading Website takedowns: a followup →

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Submission (oral): Suppression in Criminal Reform Bill

Text of Tech Liberty’s oral submission to the Justice and Electoral Select Committee concerning name suppression in the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill. (See our earlier articles.)

I represent Tech Liberty, we’re a group dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital age.

Our submission concentrates on the issues around suppression. It’s split into two parts, starting with some general comments about suppression in the Internet age, followed by a discussion of some of the difficulties with making internet service providers liable for the actions of their users.

General Points

As a civil liberties group, we wish to start by reiterating our support for open justice whenever possible. We believe that the overuse of suppression weakens our justice system and therefore we support the bill’s measures to reduce the availability of suppression. We’re also pleased to see better guidelines about when suppression is appropriate and how it is to be applied.

However, we’re concerned that we’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, that suppression is rapidly going to get so hard to enforce that we’re going to have to give up on it – whether we want to or not. This because our ability to store and access information is changing so rapidly.
Continue reading Submission (oral): Suppression in Criminal Reform Bill →

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Taking down websites you don’t agree with

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This is a post about the tactics used to take down a New Zealand website hosted in the the USA and what they mean for the Internet. (Update post.)

The website

Soon after the Christchurch quake, a website (christchurchquake.net) was published that said the quake was God’s punishment for Christchurch’s tolerance of homosexuality, with God being especially annoyed by Gay Ski Week. The website also made a number of other very odd claims concerning a conspiracy of “Phoenician-descended swamp lesbians” headed by Helen Clark that had taken over New Zealand.

The takedown

The site is no longer available (Google cache here). This is because a number of people found the site highly offensive, and some of them decided that they would do what they could to get the site taken off the Internet.

The author of the site could not be identified so most action was aimed at getting Bluehost, a company based in the US state of Utah, to take it down. Two main tactics were employed:
Continue reading Taking down websites you don’t agree with →

submission, suppression

Submission: Suppression in Criminal Reform Bill

Tech Liberty has made a submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee about the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill. (See our earlier articles.)

In this we argue that:

  • We are strong supporters of open justice and believe that overuse of suppression risks weakening our justice system. We recommend that discretion around suppression should be tightened and that most suppression orders should be for a limited time.
  • There are tremendous difficulties with defining “identifying information”, particularly when multiple sources may each have a separate piece of information that combine to break suppression.
  • That the nature of “publication” is changing as our personal communications are now conducted in public (Twitter, Facebook). We recommend the offence should be changed to punish those who deliberately breach suppression orders.
  • The nature of the “media” is changing as the Internet has allowed everyone the ability to publish, and that the law should not try to define a privileged class of media. We recommend removing the special standing for traditional news media.
  • That it is unjust to make ISPs responsible for the actions of their customers, and that doing so will lead to false claims. Furthermore that the definition of ISP is unreasonable in that it defines any person who runs a website as an ISP.
  • That ISP-based suppression is technically impractical as ISPs often will not have access to individual pages and would therefore often have to take down the entire website or even a server with multiple sites.
  • We recommend that clause 216 making ISPs liable should be removed in its entirety.

Download the full submission (PDF).

suppression

Remove ISP Liability from the Criminal Procedure Reform Bill

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The attempt to make ISPs (Internet Service Providers) criminally liable for their users’ breach of name suppression orders is unjust and unworkable.

The Criminal Procedure (Reform and Minimisation) Bill is an omnibus bill that makes significant changes to the New Zealand criminal justice system. In its attempt to reform and streamline, it weakens the right to a jury trial, takes away the right to silence and forces defendants to help the Police make the case against them.

It also changes the law around name suppression. While we support the attempt to make name suppression harder to get, we have serious concerns about the attempt to make ISPs liable for breaches of name suppression online. Read section 216 of the proposed law and then consider some of these questions:
Continue reading Remove ISP Liability from the Criminal Procedure Reform Bill →